Tiny Tracks – A Huge Discovery

When Eldon George saw these tiny footprints on a beach at Wasson Bluff near Parrsboro, he knew he had found something special. He even stood guard over the trackways for two days while Princeton University palaeontologist Donald Baird made his way to the site to confirm the identification. What George had found were some of the smallest known dinosaur footprints in the world. We believe these little tracks were made by Coelophysis, a carnivorous, bi-pedal dinosaur that hunted in packs 197 to 200 million years ago during the Jurassic Period. Coelophysis could grow up to three metres in length, but the one that made these prints was probably a tiny baby, no bigger than a robin. The tracks are cute, but these dinosaurs were not. There is evidence that they may well have eaten their own young at times.